


Elizabethan

by MooseFeels



Category: Supernatural
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Puppy Play, Rimming, Sub Castiel, Switching, mentions of Sub Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 02:35:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's called an "e-collar." Prevents dogs from licking their wounds. <br/>Tonight, Castiel needs one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elizabethan

Castiel brings the collar home, and Dean immediately knows that he’s in for a rough night.

They have arrangements. They have a system, they have everything in a certain order. A certain way. They switch off. Sometimes Castiel, sometimes Dean. They talk about what’s going to happen beforehand. They establish safewords.

Castiel hands him the collar and says, “Like we’ve talked about. I’ll be in the bedroom.”

He walks off, hanging his coat on the hooks and working at his shirt and tie. He shuts the door behind himself.

Dean holds the collar in his hands.

It’s brand new. There are still prince stickers on it- “E-Collar.” Firm, opaque plastic. Long and wide. Huge. It must be for a huge dog. Very large breed.

Dean laughs, under his breath, at the thought.

He peels the stickers off and takes off his socks and shoes. He washes his hands and face in the kitchen sink. He takes a sip of water and tries to enter the right headspace.

Castiel has asked for this. He needs this. This is not for Dean to begrudge him, to deny him. These are the kind things they do for each other, these are the ways they keep each other healthy.

He takes the collar and heads into the bedroom.

Castiel is sitting on the floor. He sits on his knees, legs tucked under his body. His head is down. His shoulders are relaxed. His spine is straight.

His shirt and pants are off. He wears only the underwear- the panties. Light grey cotton. White lace on the legs and the waist.  He holds his hands behind his back.

“Hello, angel,” Dean murmurs. He never raises his voice, in these exercises. He doesn’t need to. It’s more effective, like this. “I see someone’s been a bad boy.”

He looks at the cuts, the bruises, the scabs, up and down Castiel’s legs and ribs and back and arms. All over him.

Dean knows what this is about.

“I see you’ve been picking,” he murmurs. “If you do that, they’ll never heal. That’s okay, though. That’s why I’m here. I’ll take care of you. I always takes care of you.”

He takes the collar and wraps it around Castiel’s neck. It comes up high around his face. LIke blinders. Restrictive.

Dean opens a drawer in the dresser behind Castiel and pulls out the ribbon. They’re grey, too, like the underwear. This is Castiel’s color. These are his ribbons, his drawer. Dean has one of his own on the other side of the room, with everything in light pink. This is part of the communication. Sometimes, they don’t want something quite so elaborate. Sometimes, they just want to retreat. The colors are a signal. A conversation that’s already happened. Castiel wears grey- the panties, a tie, a shirt, and Dean knows that he wants to be quiet. Dean orders breakfast for him. Dean holds his hand in public. Dean is the big spoon. Castiel knows that Dean wears the pink, he wants the same.

For Dean, the exercise is as much in the color as it is in the voluntary surrender of the power. To wear the pink is to render himself visibly vulnerable. It is to establish himself as out of the control. Castiel’s grey, it means stormy. It means out of control. Raging. Dean’s pink, it is to be made small. To be rendered a child. Pink, it has connotations that Dean wants. Connotations of vulnerability. Of nakedness.

Castiel’s drawer has gags. Has plugs. Has blindfolds.

Dean’s is a little simpler. His drawer has restraints and a crop.

Dean ties Castiel’s wrists together firmly, so that his elbows lock and his arms are forced to point downward. Constricted.

“There you go,” Dean says softly. “There you go. Now you can’t hurt yourself. Not anymore. No. Come on, stand up. Gonna take care of you. Come on.”

Castiel stands and moves carefully. His posture is straight. The binding on his arms forces his chest outward and his shoulders back. Back arched.

Blind.

“Alright now, angel, I’m going to take you to the living room. Do you think you can do that? Can you walk for me?”

Castiel doesn’t say anything, but that’s okay. Dean knows. This is part of the exercise.

He guides him from the bedroom down the hall and to the living room. He leads him to the edge of the couch and pushes on his shoulder. Castiel folds, sitting back down on his legs.

Dean pulls a book down from the shelf and sits on the couch next to Castiel. Opens it up and scratches Castiel’s scalp as he reads quietly.

This is also part of the exercise. Patience. A skill for both of them, no matter which role they are fulfilling. Something both have had to learn.

Dean’s been staring at the paper for about twenty minutes when Castiel whimpers, sharply, and bucks in his restraints.

Dean looks down at the top of his dark head and raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything. He just waits.

“Are you alright? Are you with me?” he asks.

Castiel’s voice is broken glass in the air. Shattering. “Need to- need to touch it,” he pants. “It’s real. I have to touch it. Have to touch the scars. They’re alive. Can’t be alive. Touching them- makes them dead. Please. Please.”

This is the part that Dean has trouble with. This is not the part where Dean unbinds him and lets Castiel touch and tear at himself. This is not the part where Dean gives him what he wants. This is the part where Dean teaches Castiel to want something else.

Falling hit Castiel hard. He hates his body, he hates the way it limits him, the way it closes him. Some days, he cannot even get out of bed. There are good days. There are bad days.

This is a different kind of protection.

“I know it’s hard, angel,” Dean whispers. “I know. But you can’t. They’ll get infected. I don’t want the germs to make you sick and you don’t like the bandages.”

“I can feel them,” Castiel cries. “I can feel all of them. Please, Master. Please. Want to be good. Want to. Can’t- so hard.”

“Wait just a little longer,” Dean murmurs. “A little longer.”

Castiel whimpers again, but he stills.

Dean’s heart aches.

He reads a little while longer, quiet. He waits about twenty more minutes and then he gets up. He lets Castiel remain where he’s sitting, or rather, he doesn’t guide him up from his place. He heads to the bathroom and starts a hot tap. Pulls out the first aid kit-lays out a few bandages and some antibiotic cream. He looks at himself in the mirror.

He feels naked, in his jeans and t-shirt. This would be easier in a suit. In shiny leather shoes and a tie, the kind he has hanging up in his closet. It would make it easier to wear this self as Master. This word, so loaded, so strange, always leaves him aching and sore. He is not a Master, he is not one willingly. He chafes under it. When he was a Master, it was a lifetime ago. It was an eternity ago. It was a life when his hands were made of smoke and blood.

This shouldn’t be easy for him, though. If it’s easy, he might abuse it. He might do the wrong thing. It has to be hard, for both of them. He is right for it because it isn’t easy for him.

This is part of the conversation.

Dean straightens up and heads back to the living room.

The collar acts as an echo cone, magnifying every noise that Castiel is making. Dean hears his hurried, desperate breathing. He sees the tensions in his fingers and the firmness, the fear, the worry, the anxiety, in his forearms. In the subtle, strange ways he shakes and frets.

“Okay,” Dean murmurs, laying his hands so that he can ease Castiel up from the floor. “Come now, come on. Let me clean you up. You’ll feel better all cleaned up.”

Castiel moves gingerly down the hall and to the bathroom. The hot tap has made the air thick and warm. The steam leaves the surfaces covered in a fine layer of water. Dean lays a towel on the top of the shut toilet and gently leads Castiel to it. He sits, but the position of his arms does not allow him to relax his posture. Ramrod straight.

The cone makes Dean’s job easier tonight. It acts as blinders to Castiel, so that he can’t see Dean’s face as he works through Castiel’s bruises and cuts and scrapes and scabs. It means Dean doesn’t have to be made of stone as he does this.

Castiel is quiet and stockstill as Dean carefully cleans his scabs with hydrogen peroxide and covers them with gauze and tape. Castiel prefers gauze. It doesn’t make his skin feel like it’s suffocating.

The last hunt with Sam didn’t go great. It could have been much worse- his ribs were nearly broken and his shoulder was definitely dislocated. It doesn’t matter how small the injury is, though. Something about not being an angel any more, it makes him catatonic when he sees them. The brokenness of the, the way it shows how far he’s fallen apart, it hurts something inside of his mind. In what Dean can only understand as his soul. He has to be vigilant with Castiel as his wounds heal or he tears at them over and over and they get infected. A lesson learned the hard way about three months ago.

He had to be sedated his whole stay in the hospital. They nearly institutionalized him.

Sam is pretty good at ignoring Castiel’s screaming and getting things wrapped for the drive back. He’s good at getting Castiel to a safe place to get him cleaned up, or better yet to Dean. It’s not that he’s not thorough. It’s not that he’s not gentle. It’s not that he’s not soothing (Okay, I’ve got you. It’s okay. It’s really little, I promise. Doesn’t even need stitches. Look, see? Not so bad Castiel, I promise. It’s just like a paper cut. Remember the paper cut? Not so scary after all). It’s that he’s not Dean. He’s not the right face, the right smile, the right hands, the right silences. He’s Castiel’s best friend, not the love of his life.

They don’t do solo missions often. Dean, though, was laid up recovering from the flu and they’d promised. They’d sworn they’d be careful.

They won’t do solo missions anymore.

Even if the injuries didn’t render Castiel so upset, it eats Dean alive that he wasn’t there. That he couldn’t protect Cas and he couldn’t protect Sam. He hates it. He hates himself for it.

This is another thing to add to the drawer.

“Okay,” Dean soothes, running his hands gently up and down Castiel’s arms. “Okay, angel, okay. Come on now, let’s go back to the room. Gonna make you feel good now, okay? You were so good for me. Didn’t squirm or touch or cry. Stayed nice and still and nice and quiet. Didn’t even cry about the bandages. So good.” He helps Castiel up and leads him to the bedroom.

“Gonna leave your arms and collar on, okay?” Dean says. Not a question. A statement of fact. “Need to keep you up so you can heal. But you’ve been so good for me today, so good.”

Dean pushes Castiel delicately onto the bed. Guides him down over pillows so that he’s angled such that his hips are in the air and his shoulders are supported.

“Alright, angel,” Dean says softly. “Alright, let me give you a treat for being such a good boy for me.”

Dean sinks onto the edge of the bed and massages the space where Castiel’s hips and lower back become his ass. No bruises or scabs here. Just clean, unbroken skin. Creamy from being hidden under clothes. Dean lets his hands move down a bit until he’s at Castiel’s ass cheeks, bringing his hole into view.

Dean looks at it for a long moment before he leans forward and licks and licks and licks and licks and licks.

Castiel whimpers and moans underneath him. Cries out, “Yes! Master! Yes!” Tonight isn’t a night for the gags.

Castiel likes this part, so Dean likes this part too.

This is part of the conversation.

 

 


End file.
